You Can't Stay Here
by Jaywings
Summary: It's a long fall from the highest tower of Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed. One-shot, slight spoilers for Rhombus of Ruin.


A/N: This was meant to be part of my one-shot collection but it turned out so long that I decided to publish it by itself.

I love to know what people think of my work, so if you read it and like it (or have constructive criticism) feel free to review :D

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Tonight was the night.

Months and months had been spent in preparation. Weeks spent holed up in this makeshift laboratory with schematics, blueprints, notes, and prototypes taking up every corner. And more recently, there'd been nice, little, precious, juicy, _brains_ to take care of. Finally. He'd been looking forward to that since he'd taken this job. The only thing that could make it better would be if they all weren't so… non-aggressive.

He bent low over his worktable and was reaching for a half-filled syringe with his left hand when there was a slight movement just on the edge of his vision. His head snapped up, shoulders stiffening. The glowing red and green mechanical lenses that made up his eyes flicked back and forth, calculating, lingering the longest on the (semi-functional) scale model tank prototype sitting in the corner like a crouching beast. It remained untouched, as did the two brain jars sitting by the window. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary—all was quiet in the large, circular room

And yet, someone was nearby, _weren't_ they?

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and stood up like he was being watched. He could almost _feel_ someone skulking around just out of sight, an unknown presence, like the faintest flickering of an aura. It was a sensation which he despised, but had never been able to rid himself of. At least it came in handy sometimes.

Or perhaps it was nothing. He picked up the syringe between two fingers and shook it a little in front of his face to measure the amount of liquid inside. The presence he thought he had felt quieted down and he relaxed a bit, perfectly content to have the feeling muted, and refocused on his work. It had likely just been one of the brains acting up. There were three in the room at the moment, after all, one resting on a stand in the middle of the room and the other two by the window. He glanced over at those. They were supposedly the most important ones, belonging to two highly-ranked Psycho-whatsits, though he noted that they appeared just as docile as any of the others he'd captured. Of course, those two were fully mature. Maybe they were powerful enough to keep from being completely sedated by the green suspension fluid he'd placed them in. An interesting hypothesis, and one that he'd take great joy in testing out later.

He shook his head, his mismatched eye lights flashing. No, there was that feeling again, stronger this time! It was as if someone were prowling around just outside his range of vision, spying on his work. It couldn't be that little _boy_ again, could it? The one he'd caught sneaking around in here already? No, no, Sheegor was taking care of him. Or at least she was _supposed_ to be.

"Sheegor!" Dr. Caligosto Loboto barked, slamming the syringe back down on the table with almost enough force to shatter it. "Is that you lurking around down here? How many times tonight must I tell you to _get back to work?_ "

"Sorry," someone hiding in the shadowy doorway squeaked in reply. The speaker's already-shrill voice went up several octaves as she said quickly, "It's just me! There's no one else in here! No one else at all! I—I came to show- to give you, um…"

Into the dimly-lit room hobbled Sheegor, a short, hunched woman in a red dress. Her trembling hands were held out in front of her, covered by oven mitts and gingerly clutching a small, shiny pink brain.

"Dr. Loboto, I have a new brain for you," she went on, sounding on the verge of tears. "It's… it's a really, really good one."

His robotic eyes settled on the brain she carried and readjusted slightly, a little taken aback. He'd told Sheegor to find more brains, yes, but he couldn't recall asking her to remove any of them by herself—especially the little goggle-headed boy's, as his military-obsessed client seemed particularly keen on that one for some reason. Hmm…

 _Ah_ , that brain must have belonged to the angry little girl with the head cold. He would have preferred to take care of that one himself but, well, he'd been so busy lately, perhaps at some point he'd thrown out a suggestion for Sheegor to do it herself if she got the chance. It was nice to see she was finally taking some initiative, anyway.

But she didn't need to know that. He heaved a sigh. "That's what you _always_ say, Sheegor."

The girl shuddered and clutched the brain closer. Her tiny voice became, if possible, even smaller. "No, this one is really special! It's a fighter…"

Dr. Loboto gestured carelessly to the second, unoccupied stand on the floor. "Oh, just leave it there and I'll get to it right after I'm done with this experiment!"

"O-o-o-kay," Sheegor stammered in nearly a whisper, trembling so badly that she nearly missed the stand entirely when she tried to set down the brain on the stiff red cushion on top. She swallowed hard and settled the pink lump gently on top of it, adjusting the fabric around it to presumably make it more comfortable. That girl was far too sentimental with their specimens.

Once she'd backed away from the brain she hesitated for a moment, then burst at last into the sobs she'd been holding back and whimpered, "I can't watch!"

She spun around and stumbled out the door, wailing, and the lab was left in near silence once again until she reached the holding area up above. Her cries were still audible, though muffled, through the curtains surrounding the loft.

…But if she was now up there, why was there a faint rustling near him as if someone was _still_ in here and moving around? And if he didn't know better, he could've sworn he heard a soft snicker somewhere nearby.

"Shut it, you," he snapped at the new brain lying innocently on the stand. "This is no laughing matter! Well, for me, it is. Less so for _you_ , I would think." That brain would need to be put in suspension fluid as soon as possible. Brains didn't last very long in the open air.

He was just taking down an empty jar from a shelf when out of the corner of his vision he caught sight of the brain lifting slowly off the cushion—but there was no one touching it. It was floating on its own.

Whirling around, he brandished the claws on his right hand at it and spat, "Hold it right there! I will _not_ have that nonsense in my lab! Don't you know by now what happens when you—?!"

He broke off in surprise, as the brain ignored his words completely and levered itself neatly into the waiting prongs of the prototype brain tank parked in the corner, powering it on.

A sharp pain stabbed in his forehead and reflexively he pressed the heel of his hand to it. An deep, unfamiliar voice rang out from somewhere—the floating brain?—and surpassed his ears entirely, forcing the words directly into his mind, accompanied by a splitting headache the likes of which he hadn't felt in years.

The voice said, with grim satisfaction, _It's time to make the soup._

Dr. Loboto gave a start. Who was _that?_ That didn't sound like a kid. Was this General Oleander's idea?

The air seemed to crackle, growing dry and static as if something powerful were charging up, and he only realized too late what was about to happen. He screeched just as a blinding yellow-green bolt of energy blasted from the brain in the tank and hit him square in the chest like someone had thrown a strong punch at his sternum. A violent shock ran down his body and the force of it blasted him off his feet, knocking him flying.

He half expected to slam into one of the room's long windows, perhaps shattering it. Instead he overshot the curtains surrounding the holding area above his work station and fell through the doorway, the momentum causing him to tumble like a rag doll over the catwalk that ran around the tower outside and tip right over the railing. And suddenly he found himself in the cold, empty night air.

He was falling.

A raspy scream tore from his throat but the rest of his body seemed locked up from that close-quarters psi-blast and his head buzzed, leaving him lightheaded and dizzy. His lab apron flapped around his legs in the wind and his special shower cap was nearly ripped from his head. He forced his right arm up and clamped the claws over the rim of the cap to keep it firmly in place—on instinct he threw his left hand out to grab something, _anything_ that might break his fall.

After a moment he cut off his own screaming and gazed downwards as the world seemed to slow to a crawl, his mind enveloped in a dull, throbbing pain that sharpened around his forehead. He stared blearily out across the lake. The soft glow of illumination from the bothersome camp on the other shore blurred in his sight. There were still lights on over there even though it was newly abandoned. Every person in that camp had been brought to him and their brains were now hidden safely around the asylum. A slight smile crawled up his face at the thought of it.

You know, ignoring the fatal drop, it was a nice view up here. Decent as far as tower laboratories went. But now the question was, how was he even registering all this? _Why was he falling so slowly?_ Curious, he looked up.

…Oh, no.

His gloved left hand was stretched above his head and gripping some sort of incorporeal, shapeless, glowing yellow… _blob_.

Not again! Curse it, he hadn't meant to do that! He let go of the bubble at once as if it had burned his fingers and it dissipated into a scattering of spent energy, leaving him to fall freely once again.

Absurdly, he cackled a bit at that, the wind whipping away his voice so it could not be heard.

 _Fraudulent physician falling freely from frightening, far-flung fortresses for fatuous, foolish freaks!_

He laughed harder. And then another spike of pain shot through his head—nothing he wasn't used to at this point—but the world shuddered to a stop again, and he realized with a growl that after all this time he was _still falling_.

His traitorous arm had once again instinctively summoned that wretched glowing bubble—well, bubble-ish sort of shape. It didn't much resemble a perfect sphere, even though he knew that was what it was _supposed_ to look like.

He gritted his teeth. ' _Supposed to.'_ As if unnatural powered like these were 'supposed' to look like anything. He was a freak among freaks.

"Do _you_ need to be severed, too?" he demanded of his arm, glaring at it. He released his hold on the floating bubble once more and clamped his arm tightly to his side, winding it through one of the straps of his smock to hold it still and keep himself from being tempted to do _that_ again. He had just enough time to see that the ground was much closer to him now—no longer a fatal drop, probably—when he missed the rocky shore entirely and plunged into deep water, the cold shock of it striking deep into his bones.

The faint light from the surface receded quickly as the murky water of Lake Oblongata soaked into his lab coat and boots, dragging him down; he hung limply for a moment, a stream of bubbles escaping his mouth before he regained enough presence of mind to hold his breath. His mechanical eyepieces flickered and dimmed down as if he were being swallowed up by blackness. Of course, water and robotics don't mix. A laugh gurgled from his throat, sounding strange to his ears, and his body was already starting to crave oxygen. He wasn't supposed to be here, was he. Why was he sinking, again?

With a jolt he fought to free the hand he'd tied up, nearly ripping his glove in the process, until he managed to wrench it out of the straps and immediately struck out half-blind in the direction he sensed (no, where _gravity told him_ ) the surface was. However, his heavy clothes weighed him down and his right arm flapped uselessly, the claws on the end of it snapping at nothing, and he was already starved for air as it was. His struggles achieved nothing but to tire him out as he sank deeper.

A large _something_ bumped his foot. He jerked away, his eye lenses shorting out entirely at the sudden movement and plunging him into darkness. For one brief moment fear gripped him, seizing up his entire body. But then it melted away… and he gave a mirthless smile at the absurdity of the situation. And here he'd never even _known_ that he couldn't swim.

His eyesight flickered, giving him a fleeting view of the dark shadows below the water and a shimmering yellow glow starting to form around his hand. He snuffed it out. Even _if_ that cursed bubble might carry him up to the surface, he was _not_ using it again—

Something nudged his foot again, harder this time. He kicked out at it, striking the thing with his heel—it was more rubbery than he would have expected and he was pretty sure that whatever it was, it was alive. Suddenly, the creature surged upwards, pushing him up several feet through the water with a dizzying rush in his ears until he burst out into the air where he fell back and flailed for a moment, hacking up lungfuls of lake water and gasping in heaving breaths.

His robotic eyes fizzled and sparked, stinging his face as he floundered in the water. Just as he started to sink again the thing below him gave one more shove, pushing him roughly out onto the sandy shore where he lay in a heap for a moment like a wet rag, blind, with his sodden lab coat pressing around him and his remaining limbs feeling like lead. The edge of the water lapped against his feet and he spat sand and grit out of his mouth. A dull ache in his chest indicated that he might have broken a rib or two, though whether it was from the blast earlier or from hitting the lake he wasn't sure.

The water sloshed behind him oddly and there was the wet slapping sound of footsteps on the sand, as if something large was climbing out of the lake.

 _Oh… it's YOU_ , a heavy, gurgling voice said telepathically, the thunderous non-sound pounding in his head. Dr. Loboto yelped and clamped his left hand over his ear, the claws on his right arm digging into the skin on the right side of his face a bit too deeply and probably drawing blood. Cringing, he got to his knees in a spray of sand and hammered on his head with his fist in an effort to rid himself of the foreign voice.

It didn't work.

 _I hate to see a human drown_ , the deep voice went on, mournfully. _But perhaps I should have made an exception for you._

"Enough!" Dr. Loboto spat, his voice rough from the water, still clutching his head with his left hand and lashing out blindly with his right claw. "Stop filling my head with these—these— _noises!_ "

 _These noises are called 'SPEECH' and if you do not like it you should have left me alone,_ the voice growled, sounding even louder than before.

Dr. Loboto fell back and writhed on the ground, scrabbling backwards and prodding his eye lenses with one prong of his claw. He quickly twisted the rotatable sections of the eyepieces until the red and green lights flickered back on and at last he was able to see again.

The night was bright out, with the crescent moon reflecting off the choppy surface of the lake. He should have been directly in the moonlight but for the hulking beast standing over him, casting him in shadow and glaring down at him with bulbous, glowing yellow eyes.

His mouth curled up in a tight smile as he took in the creature, and he laughed. "Well, well, what have we _here?_ Look at this! It's my own little _Lungy_."

The beast took a step closer; the long, jagged teeth protruding from its gaping mouth glinted in the moonlight. _I DO NOT belong to you. And that name is demeaning to myself and my people_.

" _Hah!_ " Loboto climbed unsteadily to his feet, his tall figure still coming up several heads shorter than the monstrous fish. "Why do you say that? You're a fish! With lungs! There's nothing to demean—you're already a joke!" He let out another creaky laugh, shaking out his water-logged claw and grasping it over his left elbow, resting his chin on his knuckles and looking the fish up and down with a critical eye. He nodded in approval. "It's been a while, eh? Still, some of my best work yet, I'd say, though if I had another go at it I'd squash whatever pesky thing was put in your mushy fish-brain to give you a voice! Should have kept it similar to the first experiments—something to keep in mind for the next time…"

A webbed hand shot out of nowhere, slashing across his chest with needle-sharp claws and flinging him back to the ground, cracking his already-injured ribs and knocking the air back out of his lungs just when he'd started breathing normally again. He caught himself on the elbow of his prosthetic arm, jarring it and skidding on the sand.

 _There will not be a next time_. The fish followed after him, the ground shaking under its feet. _You torture my brethren for fun. You forced me to become… THIS. You had me kidnap innocent children for your own purposes and you assisted in chaining my soul to make me nothing more than a servant to humans._

Once again Dr. Loboto staggered to his feet, clutching his head and wincing at the voice-that-wasn't-a-voice, forcing out another laugh that sent more spikes of pain shooting through his forehead. "I had no hand in _that!_ The little army man handled that nasty mind-control business because he wanted a monster under his power and he has a thing for hypnosis. Hah!"

The fish made to move forward again, but hesitated. _Then… perhaps you were hypnotized, as well?_

" _Me?_ " Loboto's eye lights flashed. "I, hypnotized? HAHAHA! Do I look as though my mind's been addled by unnatural powers?!"

 _I do not know if you want me to answer that_.

"Pssh." He turned away and headed back in the direction of the tower, his boots sliding on the gritty shore and his clothes still heavy and dripping. "Why don't you run along and get me some more nice young brains? No, not nice. The angriest ones you can find! I've yet to see one throw itself whole-heartedly into a fight without being altered first! I have my doubts about finding _any_ that are even a fraction as battle-hungry as General Oleander's. I would try his mind in the tank if I was desperate, of course, but there would go my paycheck. And really, this whole project is _his_ brainchild." He let out a screech of laughter. " _Brainchild!_ HAH!"

The giant lungfish was suddenly in front of him again despite the fact that he hadn't noticed it moving. _Then you admit you were acting of your own accord?_

He swerved around the fish and waved it off with his left hand. "My 'accord' is how much my client is willing to pay and how much _fun_ the job is going to be. If you've got a problem then take it up with Oleander! He's the one who _paid_ for your hideous blobbiness. I need to get back up to my laboratory and give Sheegor a _severe_ lecture about the proper handling of brains. She was right about it though, it was a fighter…"

 _That will be difficult._

Loboto knocked on the side of his head again, not that it was any use. "What will be? Lecturing Sheegor? While she _does_ have a head as dense as a brick wall, I've found that with the proper motivation she can be inclined to listen—"

 _No, going up to your heinous laboratory. Because it is currently coming down to us, in flames._

Dr. Loboto whipped his head up and saw, to his slight shock, that the tower he'd been using as a base of operations was burning.

The lungfish swung back around, slamming him in the side with its tail as it went, and lumbered back into the lake. It vanished under the water with barely a splash.

 _You are finished_. The voice came to him even though the fish was gone, accompanied by another stab of pain in his head. _I regretfully saved you from your fate in the water but perhaps now you will have the decency to die on the land in your own fire. Goodbye._

The deep voice faded away, the connection finally having cut out, leaving Dr. Loboto alone with his own thoughts once more.

Blazing orange flames were framed by the dark night sky and reflected in his mechanical eyes. It looked as though the entire asylum was burning, awash with crackling fire, rubble and chunks of stone raining down from the sky like this was a war zone. The highest tower was missing. Perhaps it had been the first to go. In the short time since he'd been blown out of it, his own office had been decimated.

While watching the asylum's destruction he felt a small pang for the belongings he'd stashed in there. Some of those things he'd had for as long as he could remember.

Not to mention the stolen brains, now burning to crisps in the inferno. And all of his research and notes on the brain tanks. And if Oleander ever bothered to show up tonight to inspect his own project, the little man would probably blame _him_ for this.

But no matter.

He didn't need this place anyway.

With every shred of his work gone there was nothing left here for him. Soon this island would be investigated, crawling with members of that group of psychic government agents that Oleander was always complaining about to the point where Dr. Loboto would usually tune him out. It would be best to leave before then—not that they would be searching for him. They probably assumed he was dead. And as long as that mutated fish kept its big mouth shut about him he'd be happy to keep it that way. Much less hassle, much less paperwork.

Spinning around in an abrupt change of direction, he headed not toward the burning wreckage but along the desolate beach until he reached a seemingly impassable barrier made up of boulders. Dr. Loboto slipped through a narrow crevasse in the rocks and clambered down into a hidden alcove, splashing through the ankle-deep water that flooded the cave and coming up to the side of a rickety canoe stolen months ago from the camp across the lake. It was a bit chewed up—the lungfish had seen to that long ago—but it sailed well enough and didn't take in any water. He heaved it through an opening leading out onto the lake and climbed into the boat, shoving off with his foot when he was situated. It lurched into deeper water with a splash, jerking him forward a bit and nearly knocking him overboard, and bobbed out onto the lake. Dr. Loboto gingerly dug two crude oars (fashioned out of debris from around the asylum, as the camp canoes didn't come with any actual paddling mechanisms) from the bottom of the boat where they'd been stashed and dipped them into the water.

"I knew a little escape boat would come in handy one of these days," he muttered to himself, cackling as he rowed. "The more I think about that scheme of ours the worse it sounds. _Tanks!_ On an island! How was he planning to get them to the mainland?!"

It was going to be a long ride to the other side of the lake, and from there it would be an even longer trek to a town where he could find transportation to the underwater base he'd procured for his second, more… _secretive_ job. His other client wouldn't mind him arriving a little earlier than scheduled.

Dr. Loboto contented himself for a while just sitting back in the canoe and watching the remains of the asylum blaze orange against the night sky. It was a lovely sight.

When the fire had died down enough to reveal the crumbling skeleton of Thorney Towers he bent over the oars again and struck out for the opposite shore, warbling a familiar tune to himself.

" _I know who I want to take me home…_ "

Ironic, how anyone exploring the place in the coming days would think he had perished first when in reality he was likely the only survivor on the island. He rowed on into the night, smiling, silhouetted in the moonlight.

That other lab was a far more stable base than this ever had ever been, anyway. It was large, hidden away from any and all outside eyes, and complete with its own proper laboratory. He was definitely looking forward to moving in there for the longterm.

There was no way _that_ place would blow up on his watch.

" _I know who I want to take me home… take me home._ "

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A/N: For this story I'm disregarding the 100% completion bonus cutscene at the end of the game, although it is a nice scene.


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